moss mottles granite domes, witnesses who saw, briefly, transition from those living sympathetically with them, to those who did not. this briefness, infinitesimally short for those aged rocks, bluffs, mountains, witnessed a people living both in, out of sync. Wabanaki warred alongside them, these demonymic defenders soon to be abandoned. where to go? now flung far, to bayou, to lakes, to pockets 'back home,' adapting, not assimilating. granite domes remember such as these, pay them brief homage.
75/100 100 poems in 100 days Seventy-five percent!!!
And they prayed to the gods who brought the cool water, the wetness which didn't burn. They defied mother's warnings to stay away from water, to stay indoors, to stay safe.
It never rains in California, or snows in Seattle, except when it does. My father rails yet from his grave against the wetness of "the coast." Everyone, everywhere loves where they live "because it has all four seasons" but disregard none would agree what those seasons should look like or if they exist(ed) at all. Kids play baseball in snow, football during extreme heat warnings. My childhood home fills with smoke every time I visit—never during my childhood. My front yard struggles to under- stand why rain drowned months of drought yet six weeks later, they thirsted again. We think ourselves smart with only vague notions of weather's history, its background, its vagaries, its fickle obstinacy toward being pinned down. Strip "climate change" of its political charge, what's left? Surety. Things have changed...but... did this wheel always spin? Did we merely boost it? Ask my grandparents during the Dust Bowl. Ask my great- grandparents during winters when my grandparents greeted our world. Ask me. This feels different. This feels "not normal." This smacks of Apocalyptic Event (movie to follow).
Unretouched photo from an hour after dawn, August 8th, 2026, in northern Spokane, WA, where three wildfires burned uncontrollably.
Ninety-nine: French bread hot, water steaming for each loaf's crusty, chewy finish. Traveling inside cool comfort, knowing this cannot last forever. "Hot enough for you," quips farmers market vendor, blue eyes twinkling beneath weather-lined, browned forehead supporting white buzz cut. "Yes, but barely," my clever retort. He laughs, takes my money, knowing which one of us will soon be walking across hot, radiating blacktop back to his car.
65/100 “One hundred poems in one hundred days!” (but my sense of time is fluid)
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly, likely female, on Anise Hyssop. September 2026.
One of my new favorite plants is the anise hyssop. Anise hyssop grows to about four feet with long flower clusters at the end of each upward branch. These clusters each have what looks like about 100 flowers. The large one in the photo above has approximately 50 clusters. (I had to count them for a pollinator study I participated in.) The weight and height of the branches causes them to bend a bit, making them look like a flower arrangement to me. The flowers don’t bloom all at the same time, but over the past two seasons ours has peaked in late June through mid-July, after which some of the flowers begin to do whatever propagation chores the plant must do.
Same bee, different photo from July’s. Note more flower clusters in the background. July 2026.
The hyssop attracts many pollinators. I participated in the Great Southeastern Pollinator Count two weeks ago, choosing this plant because it had so many flowers. I counted mostly Eastern bumblebees and a little wasp about a half inch in length. Others included a very small bee, ants, another kind of insect I’ll just call a beetle, and the biggest dang wasp I’ve ever seen! I looked it up, and I’m sure I saw a Great Black Wasp. I’ve seen three different maximum lengths ranging from 1.4-2.0 inches. I swear it was about 2.0 inches in length. Absolutely huge.
Yesterday I saw our lone species of hummingbird here in the SE United States, a ruby-throated one, also checking out the hyssop. It seemed to prefer the similar-looking flowers of the obedient plant quite near me. And both yesterday and today the several hyssop plants in our yard have been caught the attention of Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterflies.
When I began the census count, I lamented to my wife that most of flowers have long past their peak. I expected to find few pollinators compared to June-July. The purple coneflowers have lost all their petals; the spiky centers remains, attracting goldfinches to the seeds, not pollinators to the pollen. Similarly, the black-eyed Susans and Indian blanket flowers have mostly disappeared.
But strangely (to me), the hyssop seems to have popped out more flowers! Over the past three days bees, most of the Eastern carpenter variety, have been madly jumping on the hyssop flower clusters. From a distance they’re visible by watching the ends of the stalks bouncing up and down in a non-existent breeze. And then there’s the apparent delight some butterflies have taken in finding yet more flowers on the hyssops.
We need to keep trying, keep putting out those flowers of attraction. It makes a difference. Perhaps “carpenter bees” aren’t your thing. Perhaps you dislike benign-but-huge “wasps”. No matter. Our purpose is to flower. Let the rest take care of itself.
Almost every day, he said, my glass seemed more than half full, but a fly would dance on top. When we came into home, winging away from sunset, I saw one cloud-like nuclear explosion. My trip's symbolic, beautiful resolution.
Different voices have defined “found” poems differently. Here, I started with the opening line of a poem I drafted over a dozen years ago, then used random web pages to suggest a few words from which would spring the next line. I let whatever revealed itself in my creative half exist without immediately squashing it, merely shaping it, translating it from my interior language-without-words to a poor imitation in English. My Editor insisted on punching meaning into it, which I allowed. At the end I decided it needed to come full circle, thus lending meaning (I hope) to the final lines. In a way, this process worked similarly to something I’m getting ready to post (non-poem) when time allows.
We wear patchwork clothes, stitched by sadness not to have seen snow leopards through our blizzarding genesis. Inspired by writings we don't understand, we personalize them to make everything obtain meaning where none existed. Welcome to your mission: to drive home meaning to others while pathetically struggling to find your own, exhibiting your confidence which betrays your lack of understanding. "the mic is yours, Ken," as if he thinks I'm important. Games, games fill cracks left when motive, meaning dried up. More valuable than playing? Being. Staying within where we find nothingness imbuing everything-ness. Boldly facing it without doing, comfortable in this. Yet, in here we wear patchwork clothes, satisfied they're stitched by sadness.
The older I get (and others I presume), the more difficult it becomes to fight against the tide of habit. For a borderline obsessive-compulsive, it’s extra hard.
My father’s rose, transplanted. July 2024.
Habits beget habits, rituals, rituals. Unfortunately, predictable. Grasp inspiring spark, informer of our ruts. Use its spark, its flame, burn away time's accumulated dross. Re-enter one's original intent, one's sincerity, one's honesty. Live there.
Twice in two days my wife has caused me to take a good photograph. Yesterday it was, “whale! there!” and I snapped the photo that graced today’s poem. It was one of those point-shoot-hope-you-have-it-pointed-right kind of things. Today almost occurred the same way. She pointed to a swooping bird and asked, “Is that an eagle?” Yes, it was, and thankfully I resisted the urge to zoom in with the telephoto. I don’t think I could have captured the bird otherwise. Better to zoom in the editing phase. (Thank you, digital darkroom!) Not that I didn’t zoom, but the above photo represents only 50-60% of the original.
In another poem I’ll try to convey this weird feeling I have that a pretty decent vacation isn’t going that well. This moodiness infects me on quite a few vacations, and I joyfully welcome all the times I just seem to go with the flow and have a great time, despite inevitable setbacks. It seems enjoying yourself takes precedent to enjoying the vacation. Today, I’m just trying to capture today.
Gray whale tail off Yaquina Head, north of Newport, OR. August 2026.
Another paradisiacal day
surrounded by memories, good, bad, indifferent. golf, tantalizing money suck; couldn't do it now anyway. constant gray weather wearing her down, then wearing me down. whales! no, just rocks. but birds: familiar, strange, tiny, grand. trip's end trips up more often than not. "What do you want to do?" "I dunno. What do you?" Bumper-to-bumper others live out their dream while we duck into breweries. No dinner plans almost equals no dinner. "What should we do tomorrow?"
This one’s a definite work in progress and likely an opening act for something much larger, perhaps joined to another couple I’ve written lately.
Looking SW at Vantage, WA. Look closely and maybe you can see the Columbia River. Perhaps you can see the bridge for I-90 across the bridge? Surely you can see it! It’s a half-mile long, right there in the middle of the photo. How about the ridges on the opposite side of the river? Photo unretouched. August 2026.
"Smoke 'em if you've got them," and baby, do we. Fires ravage more than brush, trees, meadows. Fires ravage lives, plans, communities. Where smoke lies, fires burn: why don't I see smoke in my mirror each morning? Where's smoke as I gaze on my love? Doesn't smoke envelop me when when I read or hear headlines? How can I see out of my car, encountering those who lack driving skills? How can we see our dawn when fires surround us? Our world's on fire, yet we bemoan smoke.
all the voices in my head 